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DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition > General Discussions > Topic Details

Aure

24 Jun @ 1:08pm

beginner's advice

Hi, If there is someone friendly here who could explain some things for me , since I am quite confused about this game , but hopefully without spoiling too much, i would appreciate it. This is my first Souls game that I play from this series.
I am somewhere in the second area, the huge castle, also been at the graveyard and in undergrounds. I am exploring the castle for now. Playing as a knight, I have Knight armor set a morgenstern weapon and a knight shield. I upgraded the weapons a bit, to +4 and +2 .
My questions would be: should I use Humanity items or save for later? What does it even mean to gain humanity here? What is Kindle? What is Reverse Hollowing? Should I do these things? Should I buy various items, like bombs and use them or just forget it for now? Who is that super black knight from the cover? Or rather: should i leave him be for now or try to defeat him (not sure if I can, he beats me pretty easily, ahah)?
Should I destroy all the barrels each time or only the first time ? (do they give something second time or later?)
Something else I should know?
To be honest, I feel like I am just running in circles and fighting the same enemies again and again. Is that how this game should be (a bit grindy)?

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Sealer Moon has DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

24 Jun @ 1:25pm

Humanity increases your resistances and some other (kinda irrelevant) things. You need to use Humanity to kindle bonfires, which will give you more Estus Flasks when you rest at them.
Being human is only required for kindling and being Invaded (The servers are currently offline, so you will only get invaded by NPCs)

You can lose all humanity when you die, so you should always kindle whenever you can.
Reversing Hollowing consumes one humanity but is required to kindle.

You can buy consumables like bombs if you like, they help a bit early on.
You can try to kill any enemy you like, as early as you like, by using different methods.
I always kill the Black Knight by backstabbing him repeatedly.

No reason to destroy barrels other than to pass through them, unless there is a corpse visibly inside it.

The game is a bit grindy, exploration is key and spending your souls before you lose them is important.
Find and only upgrade weapons you like, don't waste levels on Resistance, backstabbing is very powerful, don't consume Fire Keeper Souls manually. All enemies have weaknesses and resistances, or can be countered in some way.

Some extra tips:

I assume you're not going to focus on magic, so I recommend increasing Vitality, Endurance and either Strength or Dexterity depending on the weapons you use.
Endurance increases max weight, and it's best to try and stay below 50% of your maximum weight. If you can stay below 25%, even better. Those two breakpoints increase your roll speed.
Vitality might feel useless at first but it's crucial to have.
Strength/Dexterity increases the damage scaling of weapons, and each weapon has a scaling rank associated with it, with E being the worst and A and S being the best.
Don't consume boss souls unless you don't want the item it can be transformed into.
Armor reinforcements aren't as worthwhile as weapon reinforcements.
Avoid killing friendly NPCs, they do not respawn.
Most enemies respawn when you rest at a bonfire, making it easy to grind souls.
Consider having a small supply of Purple Moss, it removes Poison. Blooming Moss can get rid of Toxic status.
You must be human to summon NPCs for bosses, but not all bosses have NPCs you can summon. It also increases the boss' health and damage to have summons present.
Breaking an enemy's poise lets you stun them momentarily, allowing you to get another hit in.
Your morning star has a "bleed" effect. If you hit enemies enough, most of them will bleed for 30% of their health (much less on bosses, and some are immune to bleeding)

Last edited by Sealer Moon; 24 Jun @ 1:47pm

NightmareGats has DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

24 Jun @ 2:46pm

If you hit a tail of a red drake enough times, you'll get an amazing weapon that will carry you through the game. It's power only matched by Lightning spear and crystal halberd that you can find later in the game.

Horrible Orbit has DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

25 Jun @ 1:11pm

You can parry most humanoid enemies wielding melee weapons (the black knights, for example). Parry by pressing left trigger as the attack lands. This will trigger a stagger animation and if you land a normal attack during it, it'll do a special animation and even more damage than a backstab. The knight shield can parry, but there are a few big shields that can't. Luckily, you can also parry with nothing equipped in your left hand.

In the graveyard there's a powerful sword and a pretty good spear just laying out in the open. They're guarded by giant skeletons, but if you evade 'em just long enough you can get the items anyway and keep them after you die.

The best starting item is the Master Key, which can open a variety of doors that are otherwise kind of a pain. Like in the tower leading to the Taurus Demon (the giant hairy guy with the axe), you could take the stairs down and fight Havel The Rock, who has huge armor and will 1- or 2-shot you every time, but if you beat him you can get one of the best rings in the game.

hone

25 Jun @ 4:10pm

Humanity increases you droprate from enemies, also boosting damage for some special weapons. Keep in mind that bonuses are increasing only up to 10 humanities and there is no need in using more. Also humanity is used to kindle bonfires. Kindling every bonfire to max is very "expensive" and you might not be able to do that with every bonfire without extra farming, but this is very important and will be helpful in the future, since kindling raises you amount of Estus Flasks that you are getting by resting at the bonfire

tedorikk

18 Jul @ 2:22pm

Originally posted by Horrible Orbit:
You can parry most humanoid enemies wielding melee weapons (the black knights, for example). Parry by pressing left trigger as the attack lands. This will trigger a stagger animation and if you land a normal attack during it, it'll do a special animation and even more damage than a backstab. The knight shield can parry, but there are a few big shields that can't. Luckily, you can also parry with nothing equipped in your left hand.

In the graveyard there's a powerful sword and a pretty good spear just laying out in the open. They're guarded by giant skeletons, but if you evade 'em just long enough you can get the items anyway and keep them after you die.

The best starting item is the Master Key, which can open a variety of doors that are otherwise kind of a pain. Like in the tower leading to the Taurus Demon (the giant hairy guy with the axe), you could take the stairs down and fight Havel The Rock, who has huge armor and will 1- or 2-shot you every time, but if you beat him you can get one of the best rings in the game.

Not a new player but I'm very inexperienced, tbh. Please, what does this mean exactly?
"... (The servers are currently offline, so you will only get invaded by NPCs)..."
Being invaded? tyvm!

alienstookmybeer has DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

18 Jul @ 5:02pm

Originally posted by tedorikk:

Not a new player but I'm very inexperienced, tbh. Please, what does this mean exactly?
"... (The servers are currently offline, so you will only get invaded by NPCs)..."
Being invaded? tyvm!

There are certain areas where other players could jump into your game when the servers were online and try to kill you. I only started playing a few years ago so I also missed out on this "fun". But there are also a few non-player characters that invade your game in specific areas in a similar fashion.

Also, I experienced a bug where my character profile somehow became corrupted so that the npc invaders no longer appeared any more. Just throwing that out there in case you never see an invader.

Horrible Orbit has DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

18 Jul @ 6:09pm

@Tedorikk If the enemy NPC has two arms, two legs, and a weapon, chances are you can parry them. The hollows in the Undead Burg, the snakemen in Sen's Fortress, the black knights in various places, and a few more enemy types can be parried with proper timing on the left trigger/L2 button/ZL button, if you're using a controller.

If it's a dog, a boss monster, one of the blobs in the sewers, or something that doesn't anatomically have human characteristics, or is really big, it can't be parried. You also can't parry projectiles or spells.